


let the stars guide you home

by Vail



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Cullen-Centric, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, POV Cullen Rutherford, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 06:08:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11202045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vail/pseuds/Vail
Summary: Cullen has ‘I'm glad it was you’ on his forearm. It shows up a few months after his third birthday, in neat cursive, and it keeps him hopeful and strong through years of hard training.Amell's words are ‘Hey mage, curfew is in five minutes, you better head back to the dorms.’ She knows she’s the younger of the pair since she was born with the words emblazoned on her back. The Chantry sister who helped her mother give birth read them and handed her over to the templars as an infant.(AU where your soulmate's first words to you are written on your skin.)





	let the stars guide you home

**Author's Note:**

> Me: The Dragon Age fandom really needs more Soulmate AU fics!  
> Me: Hmm, I guess I'll write one!  
> Me: [reading my own fic] Why on earth did I do this
> 
> Please note that while there is NO dub-con, there is a scene that focuses on Cullen's encounter with the Desire demon in the Circle. I promise it goes very differently here than it did in canon.

Cullen has _‘I'm glad it was you_ ’ on his forearm. It shows up a few months after his third birthday, in neat cursive, and it keeps him hopeful and strong through years of hard training. He gets through all of it thinking that at the end, there will be someone who is fated to be his partner, someone who will like him as soon as they meet. He wants to work hard to be worthy of these words, of them.

Amell's words are _‘Hey mage, curfew is in five minutes, you better head back to the dorms.’_ She knows she’s the younger of the pair since she was born with the words emblazoned on her back. The Chantry sister who helped her mother give birth read them and handed her over to the templars as an infant.

She grows up in the Circle, passed from enchanter to enchanter until she can walk on her own and then toddles after them until she casts her first spell and is shunted off to the apprentice dorms. Nobody ever gives her a proper name. Amell was her mother’s surname and she keeps it, the only thing she’ll ever have from a family she never knew.

Amell has a lifetime of watching how the templars treat the mages - grows old enough to fear them herself, even Gregor, who once picked her up and let her sleep against his shoulder while he held a meeting with all the senior enchanters. She has known the kind ones and the worst ones and decides it doesn’t matter which her soulmate is. Either way, he’ll be her jailor.

Cullen finds her one day in the library. He's new to the Circle and doesn't know what to call her - he’s just started his patrol and knows that if anyone else catches her, she’ll be in trouble. “Hey - mage? Curfew is in five minutes, you better head back to the dorms.” Amell’s head jerks up from the tome she was reading. She looks at him with wide eyes, her face white, before nodding, shelving the book and swiftly passing him on her way out the door.

She clenches swathes of her robes between her shaking fingers as she half-runs through the stone halls. The words, when voiced, were awkward and kinder than they had been as blocky print between her shoulderblades, but she doesn't want him to know. It's not like the apprentice mages ever have much reason to speak to the templars directly,  but Amell goes so far as to walk everywhere with Jowan, who doesn't question why she refuses to say anything to Cullen in particular. There are enough mages who cannot bear certain templars.

(When she's Harrowed, when she takes too long coming out of it and Gregor gives him the order and the First Enchanter only closes his eyes and turns away, Cullen strikes his blade through her and-

And she opens her eyes. They flash unholy gold for a moment before returning to her normal brown. She smiles weakly, and then whispers, “I’m glad it was you.”)

* * *

The Desire demon doesn’t know what to make of him, and Cullen knows that’s a good thing, but at the same time he wonders what it says about him. It’s not that he’s unswayed, but that she can’t figure out what to offer him.

“You wish Amell were alive again,” she whispers, trailing one finger across his cheek. He clenches his jaw and says nothing. She spins around and somewhere in between, her body shifts from purple to golden brown. The horns shrink and then drop and suddenly there’s dark, loose curls hanging down one shoulder.

The demon doesn’t bother with the illusion of robes. Cullen stares at her in grim silence and feels nothing but the frantic, fearful pounding of his heart and the sweat dripping down the back of his neck.

She cups her breast with one palm and leans close to him, but then sighs. “No, not quite, I see.” The hair shortens and bleaches itself blonde, sleek and straight. Her skin lightens. “A different soulmate, then?” His eyes reflexively look down to his bare arm, where Amell’s handwriting is still scrawled in fading gray. It blurs away before his eyes, like ink under water, and he swallows hard at the pang of loss that hits somewhere deep inside him. The demon traces new words, words that could be from anyone, onto his arm with one sharp, elongated nail. It bleeds and dries in the same moment, black as night.

He looks away and refuses to read them.

Scowling, the demon wipes away the fake mark. “Not your old soulmate, and not a new one either. What _do_ you want, Ser Cullen?” Her clawed hands grab his chin and force him to look her in the eye. Where he felt only half-awake before, like lucid dreaming in a nightmare, now he feels her digging through his mind, rifling through memories, trying to find what will make him give in. What he wants badly enough to make a deal for.

Cullen tries to pull free from her grasp, closes his eyes and presses against her hand hard, until he feels like the bones in his jaw will break before he moves her hands an inch. Before he can do more, the demon lets him go with a cruel smile, and shifts back into the mocking form of Amell. “A truth,” she breathes. “What you want is an answer.”

He swallows hard and says nothing, biting the inside of his cheek until he tastes copper on his tongue.

The demon’s voice changes until she almost _sounds_ like the girl she pretends to be. “You want to know if you were right to kill me,” this mirage of Amell says, sing-song. “You want to know if Gregor was too hasty in giving the order, if you should have insisted on waiting, if I would have passed if you’d given me just a _little_ longer.”

“Your - her eyes changed color,” he snarls, the first words that the demon has gotten him to say since she trapped him in this corner of the stairwell. “She was already lost, if I had hesitated then the demon would have taken her over -”

“Like this?” she laughs, and those brown eyes flash again, except - was it a trick of the lamplight? Of the excess energy from the Fade, a reflection from the golden bowl that held the lyrium -

“No,” he murmurs. “Oh, Maker, _no_.”

“You were the last person I saw, Cullen,” Amell (the demon) ( _Amell_ ) says softly, gently. “I was _so glad_ it was you.”

* * *

The Wardens and their companions find Cullen on the floor, kneeling over the remains of a Desire demon.

“You broke free on your own?” The blonde Warden says, surprised. “Good man. You’re the first Templar we’ve found alive and...himself.”

Cullen scrubs his face and rises to his feet. Nobody in their party comments on his red-rimmed eyes. “You don’t mean everyone else -”

“Oh no,” the red-headed archer assures him. “Most of the Order is outside - the Knight Commander is there. He wants to order the Right of Annulment but we wanted to come in to see if we could help anyone.”

His tired face twists into a scowl, much to their surprise. “Gregor is too impatient,” Cullen mutters. “I’ll go with you to the top floor, then. We should try and save whoever’s left.”

The Warden elf with Dalish tattoos curling across his cheeks claps him on the shoulder. “You’re welcome to join us,” he says, his voice gentle. “Are you sure you’re alright, though?”

Cullen glances back down at the corpse on the floor and shudders. “It turns out that she - it - didn’t have much to offer me. I’ll be fine.” He follows them up the stairs, and forces himself to not look back.

_“Please,” he had asked, his voice hoarse. “Just tell me.”_

_The demon curled one finger underneath his chin and made him look up. It was Amell’s face that looked back at him. “Unfortunately for you,” she drawled, “What you want is out of my domain. I don’t deal in answers - few people want the truth.”_


End file.
